Deeds to house say no livestock... what to do?

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Deeds to house say no livestock... what to do?
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Behemoth

Joined: 01 Dec 2004
Posts: 19023
Location: Leeds

Posted: Wed Aug 29, 07 9:36 pm Post subject:
If they drown out the noise of the planes there may be grounds for complaint.

wizz

Joined: 06 Apr 2005
Posts: 561

Posted: Wed Aug 29, 07 9:44 pm Post subject:

Welcome fellow Tyke! (that's assuming you're a Yorkshire native ...) but never the less welcome anyway...

When do your deeds date from... or to be more precise do you know when the "no livestock" clause dates from and if so who inserted it? I guess it might have been something that relates to a long forgotten time, however if relatively recent and your neighbours are aware of it potentially more problematic i guess...

My sister's house has a similar clause in her deeds. She purchased her place off a farmer who had rented it out for years and had always been part of the farm estate previously, hence their solicitors had been responsible for drawing up the details of the deeds so we presume that they inserted the bit about livestock. As the vendor farmer lives up the lane, its a fair assumption that they might object if they noticed chickens in my sisters back garden...

We were in exactly the same situation as my sister... i.e. buying our place off a farmer selling his estate cottages off... luckily for us the restriction our farmer put in was on the keeping of caravans - which we didn't think was a problem until we bought the place and realised that living in it wouldn't really be possible whilst we gutted it - hence required a caravan on site to live in!!

All was fine in the end as they were happy to let us park a caravan temporarily whilst the work was being done...

Anyway I've rambled on somewhat! Might be worth posting this on the finance & property threa... as you might get more comment there?

best wishes
wizz

Rosemary Judy

Joined: 08 Aug 2005
Posts: 1215
Location: East Midlands

Posted: Thu Aug 30, 07 7:40 am Post subject:
But backgarden hens are pets, surely

bagpuss

Joined: 09 Dec 2004
Posts: 10507
Location: cambridge

Posted: Thu Aug 30, 07 8:07 am Post subject:

Justme wrote:

Most ex council estate houses are not allowed fences walls or caravans / boats / works vans ect in the front gardens. Dont seem to stop them.

We have also sorts of such stipulations in our deeds and ours is an ex council property. The strangest one is the back fence must remain a fence and cannot be a wall or hedge

Treacodactyl
Downsizer Moderator

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 25795
Location: Jumping on the bandwagon of opportunism

Posted: Thu Aug 30, 07 8:14 am Post subject:

Rosemary Judy wrote:

But backgarden hens are pets, surely

Sadly not in the eyes of the law. Poultry, even pets, are regarded as livestock and you must follow various regulations with regard to feeding and disposing them when they die. I certainly regard our hens as pets but still have to follow the regs.

As for the original question I think it would depend on when the deeds were drawn up to a certain extent, do you know when they were?

Jb

Joined: 08 Jun 2005
Posts: 7761
Location: 91� N

Posted: Thu Aug 30, 07 8:22 am Post subject:

The strangest stipulation I had in a property deed was my last house where I was not allowed to have a stationary steam engine on the property!

More on topic I have a vague recollection that in law people had a right to keep certain livestock on their property (chickens and pig were the examples I remember) whether the deeds would override that is an entirely different issue. More realistically the restriction is probably there for some historic reason which may no longer apply such as to not compete with a farmer who originally sold the land. On the whole if it's just chickens and not a recent restriction in a leasehold or similar I'd be tempted to pretend you had not noticed and go ahead regardless.

Last edited by Jb on Thu Aug 30, 07 9:03 am; edited 1 time in total

Mary-Jane

Joined: 13 Jan 2005
Posts: 18397
Location: The Fishing Strumpet is from Ceredigion in West Wales

Posted: Thu Aug 30, 07 8:24 am Post subject: Re: Deeds to house say no livestock... what to do?

wellywoman wrote:

First time on the slopes tonight so be gentle with me........
Just wondering if anyone knows, if the deeds of your house say 'no livestock' but your neighbours don't object to a couple of chickens (no cockerel clearly), is anyone really going to care??? Or find out?? Am I just being too law abiding???

The best way forward would be simply to 'suck it and see' wellywoman. Did your solicitor not make you aware of this covenant on the title to the property before you bought it?

In any event, if your house is more than 60 years old, it may well be an oldish covenant in which case the orginal covenantee could be dead and gone and any other people affected by it moved away. Technically it is a breach if you go ahead with chooks, but if your neighbours do not object give it a go.

Hope this helps.

bernie-woman

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 7824
Location: shropshire

Posted: Thu Aug 30, 07 8:31 am Post subject:

We have the no livestock thing in our deeds too and have never tied to do anything about it as we know our immediate neighbour would object (lovely woman but hates chickens

)

We have just seen an old 1960's covenant enforced in our road - it took a long time and a lot of wrangling and the District and the County Council were involved at some point as covenants are very difficult to enforce - it was something to do with the original contrcators who built the road put in a covenant that cretain areas would be kept as green space although the property owner next to the space would have to maintain the land they cannot put any kind of boundary fence on this land etc.. etc

judith

Joined: 16 Dec 2004
Posts: 22789
Location: Montgomeryshire

Posted: Thu Aug 30, 07 9:27 am Post subject:
Does your covenant actually say "no livestock"? When we lived in W. Yorks, there was a similar covenant on our house, only it was worded that the animals we could keep were limited to "cat, dog or caged bird". If you have the blessing of your neighbours, I reckon you might be able to argue that a couple of chickens in an ark were "caged birds".

Rosemary Judy

Joined: 08 Aug 2005
Posts: 1215
Location: East Midlands

Posted: Thu Aug 30, 07 10:21 am Post subject:

We have a covenant on our shared drive that entitles us to

'drive pigs, geese, sheep and chickens' - we took that to mean we can keep all of them on our property ! So far Mr RJ has agreed to three hens, only took 9 years to get him to agree to that

I know that technically hens are livestock, but would your average neighbour actually know the difference between livestock and pets ?

and what about rabbits ???????

wellywoman

Joined: 29 Aug 2007
Posts: 26
Location: Leeds

Posted: Thu Aug 30, 07 5:45 pm Post subject:

Hmmmmm... all very interesting..... Thanks for all replies. The house is not that old (1950's) but my neighbour said the deeds are just the document that sold the land to the first owner and so are not necessarily enforceable now as is a freehold property and not ex council or anything. Anyway. Will give it a go I think once straw poll (ho ho) of all the neighbours has been undertaken and spring as sprung. The lure of free eggs might be the way forward....

n

Joined: 07 Jun 2005
Posts: 211
Location: Lothian

Posted: Thu Aug 30, 07 10:24 pm Post subject:

Our deeds say no fences higher than six feet, one dog or cat, no poultry or bees or other livestock, no rabbits (presumably these are pet rabbits, the ones which are burrowing under the shed are clearly illiterate rabbits and they can't read house deeds).
We have two dogs and two chickens and two teenagers who are far more trouble and create more noise than any dog or chicken does.
I did ask the council and then said that they didn't want me to tell them, and that the only time they had ever enforced deeds in the last couple of years was on a man who kept pigeons which were causing a nuisance and were not being kept properly.
My next door neighbour even chicken-sits when we go on holiday!

n

oldish chris

Joined: 14 Jun 2006
Posts: 4148
Location: Comfortably Wet Southport

Posted: Fri Aug 31, 07 3:59 pm Post subject:
All chicken keepers that I've come across tend to get a surplus of eggs in mid-summer. Bit of bribery tends to help (IMHO)

mochasidamo

Joined: 22 Sep 2005
Posts: 615
Location: Montgomery

Posted: Fri Aug 31, 07 10:05 pm Post subject:
In previous properties I've had "no pigs"..but only on part of the land, and "no tallow candles to be made"... the Oxfordshire equivalent of "no durian fruit on the premises" so often seen in the far East I expect...

guyandzoe

Joined: 12 Jan 2007
Posts: 78

Posted: Sat Sep 01, 07 8:31 am Post subject:

I think that when you signed the Deeds you made a contract with the vendor. He and any previous owner could enforce the Deed as could anyone else who knows about its detail.

Having said that a deed is not easy (or cheap) to enforce.

If you are prepared to get rid of the offending chooks pronto and do so as soon as anyone should complain then I would not be too concerned about the covenent. Many covenents are placed in Deeds simply because lawyers follow a draft set of cover-all Deeds. They do not necessarily represent the needs of the seller. Many, many houses have covenents denyingthe owner the right to erect arials (which covers satelite dishes) this never stopped anyone I know from putting them on their house. I only know of a single case where a woman complained about dishes and she was given short shrift by every one she tried to get to enforce the Deed because they are now part and parcel of everyday life.

guy

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